Date posted: December 13, 2010
Welcome to our new website for “To Whom I May Concern” (TWIMC). If you have seen a performance of TWIMC, then you already know that the goal is conversation, a conversation about an uncomfortable subject, Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD is the elephant in the room that we know is present but nobody wants to address.
Cancer used to be that same elephant. The person who was diagnosed with cancer knew it. The people who cared about him/her knew it. But everyone was afraid to talk together about it. We believed that conversation would be too difficult, too painful, too upsetting. We sat in silence around the dinner table, in the bedroom, and in the doctor’s office, until the Hospice Movement came along and gradually the silence was broken. Now cancer is spoken everywhere and the comfort that comes with openness can be felt by the person diagnosed as well as by the friends and family that accompany that person.
Alzheimer’s disease is the new it. We are afraid to talk about it and so we all suffer in silence.
Unless, of course, you have been to a performance of To Whom I May Concern! Alzheimer’s is spoken here, first by the people who have the diagnosis, and then by the people who care about them. The unspoken IT becomes an I which, in the end, is the focus of our concern. The conversation begins on stage, continues through the post-play discussion, and hopefully, follows people home to the dinner table and bedroom and doctor’s office.
I hope to contribute to the conversation in this blog. The latest info on AD can be found on many wonderful websites on the Internet. I will try to link you to some of them. But my focus will be on the stories that lead to openness and dialogue about AD. I invite your responses and some of your own stories that will encourage us to break the silence and embrace the person trying to make sense of his/her life with AD.
It’s a whole other ball game and I am glad that I fit into that space where, whatever it is that you want to do and you are doing as long as you are happy with it, then you know What the Heck!